Hannah Barry Gallery

The Hannah Barry Gallery first found a home in the emerging Copeland Cultural Quarter in central Peckham in November 2007. The iconic historic Bussey Building, home to almost a hundred artists and small businesses, hosted a seated dinner for 115 guests to celebrate a year of exhibitions at 78 Lyndhurst Way and to thank the many people who had helped and encouraged the artists in their work. Inspired by the unusual conditions at 78 Lyndhurst Way, with its ten rooms and garden, the programme of monthly exhibitions at the house had exhibited monograph bodies of work within a group show. The subject of each show was chosen to encourage progress and experimentation to help young artists develop their ideas in reference to our time. The Hannah Barry Gallery was founded to continue and progress this kind of work. The first exhibition held in the Copeland Cultural Quarter (CCQ) was in Feburary 2008, in the Bussey building. The Gallery moved to its current permanent space in a warehouse next to the Bussey building within the CCQ after that.

Exhibitions

Hannah Barry Gallery, Copeland Cultural Quarter

Emerging Artists Find a New 'Blank Canvas' in London (October 14, 2009)

Peckham, a run-down district of London, south of the Thames, is said to have the capital’s highest concentration of knife crime, hairdressers and gospel churches.
Now, add up-and-coming artists: in easy reach of some of the capital’s leading art schools, the area’s low prices and vast, empty industrial spaces are attracting experimental avant-garde collectives, studios and galleries — a countercultural challenge to the established North-of-the-river world of the Frieze art fair and the gentrified East End.
“Peckham is the land of the free. It’s like a blank canvas,” said Hannah Barry, an enterprising 26-year-old who founded her eponymous gallery last year in a warehouse of a former cricket bat factory. New York Times Read more

The summer with Frank’s Café & Campari Bar with its fabulous views from central Peckham came to an end on 26th September 2009. Let’s hope the huge success encourages Frank to start a permanent café in Peckham. In the meantime, see these splendid views by Nick Woodford and a few of the many photos and comments over the summer.

Timesonline: Venice, glorious city of Titian, Casanova and Vivaldi, has welcomed a new artistic powerhouse into the international fold at the Biennale this week. Enter Peckham, downtrodden South London neighbourhood made famous as the setting of Only Fools and Horses. The Peckham Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is a whitewashed studio the size of a small newsagent’s shop. Although it is outside the official competition it is already attracting appreciative visits from some of the art world’s most influential tastemakers.

“It feels very much like where we are in Peckham,” Hannah Barry said yesterday, with a straight face. “The busyness of the place, the selling of food on the streets, the fish — these are all big things in Peckham.” Ms Barry, 25, founded her eponymous London gallery last year with Sven Münder, 30, a Bavarian who had just completed a degree in cultural history. The gallery is now on the radar of some of the most important people in the art world. This despite Peckham’s undeniable, and they believe undeserved, reputation for crime and urban decay. "Peckham’s got a really bad name but we are really grateful to the area for allowing us to do what we do. More people should know that it’s a place where things are really possible.” Ms Barry said. Because of its cheap rents and proximity to Camberwell and Goldsmiths schools of art, Peckham is home to hundreds of young artists, giving Ms Barry and Mr Münder’s gallery and their Venice pavilion a strong local identity. Read more...

Timesonline: … This does not mean that the era of the world’s most important arts gathering is over. Indeed, as the Bienniale embarks on its 53rd edition, it appears, if anything, to have increased its pull. Seventy-seven countries have turned up, including a number of newcomers, most prominent among them (if only because it has set up two outposts) the United Arab Emirates. And there is an eclectic assortment of new minority groups to boot, ranging from Catalonia through the Principality of Monaco to Peckham in South London, which stands proudly apart from the rest of the British capital, setting up its own mini-empire in an empty shop…
Read more...

Telegraph.co.uk: Even a few years ago, a visitor could easily cover the Venice Biennale in a day or two. Now it takes forever, and you need a map, a compass and ideally a motorboat. That’s because one of the upsides of globalisation is that countries that have never before shown in Venice have begun to mount professional and … Finally, for the past couple of years I’ve followed the progress of gallerist Hannah Barry and her stable of young artists from their base in Peckham to a recent West End show. And, blow me down, here they were in Venice, with a Peckham pavilion. The group show includes paintings and sculptures by fresh new artists such as Ed Wallace, James Balmforth, and Andreas Blank. That’s what I like about the Biennale – all the money and prestige in the world can’t buy good or even mildly interesting art. Spain, France, and Russia show pure rubbish; the energy coming out of Mexico, Glasgow and Peckham blow you away… Read More...

Eight young artists from south London (21 April - 7 May 2009)

By Jackie Wullschlager Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 25 2009 03:43
"... When asked towards the end of his life about the relationship between art-making and sex, Picasso flipped back, “They’re the same thing.” Half a century later, to give a group show featuring eight male artists under the age of 30 the title “To Paint Is To Love Again” is so dangerously old-fashioned that it is bold, innovative, striking. And so it is with the work displayed at Timothy Taylor’s former Dering Street premises, temporarily on loan as a West End venue for south London’s Hannah Barry Gallery.

The Peckham eight here punch beyond their years, yet exhibit a youthful ebullience that is always exhilarating. Two severely schematised improvisations, Christopher Green’s graphite criss-crossed rules and circles on monochrome boards, “Between Together and Afar”, and a large canvas by Shaun McDowell in deep Venetian red streaked, smeared, stubbed in vehement gestural marks – emerald, cornflower, saffron – pull you in from the street and establish the show’s grave emphasis on line, form and colour... ‘To Paint Is To Love Again, Painters from Peckham’, Hannah Barry Gallery at 21 Dering Street, London W1, 21 April - 7 May 2009" Read more...

Many Worlds (21st-28th February 2008)

An Exhibition of New Work by Bobby Dowler

In February 2008, the first floor of the Bussey Building was used to show Many Worlds, a large exhibition of new work (sculpture, collage and drawing) by Bobby Dowler and the second of the year from the Hannah Barry Gallery (see photos below).

The exhibition ran for 9 days from Thursday 20 until Friday 29 February and was also accompanied by a sequence of events devised by the artist. All events took place in the exhibition at The Bussey Building, apart from Pause A Moment (two short plays by Samuel Beckett directed by Osh Jones), which was performed at The Bickleigh Arms, a disused pub on Vestry Road in Camberwell.

Day Dream Receiver (29th April - 6th May 2008)

Photos

Catastrophe (4th-11th September 2008)

Painting Sculpture Collage Drawing by Bobby Dowler

Artists and Peckham seem to go together like, well, cuckoos and nests, or hermit crabs and shells: they move in and customize the place to suit. First there was Area 10, and then the squat at Lyndhurst Way. And now there is the Bussey Building, a magnificent, echoing Victorian warehouse which has been colonized by up to 100 artists. Peckham residents are getting kind of attached to them, and the town centre is fighting to keep them in place rather than lose it to the TfL and a tram depot. A fact which Londonist finds both heartwarming and interesting. Anyway, head round the back to Copeland Road, and you will find that the ‘colony’ has its very own exhibition space, the Hannah Barry Gallery. And Ms. Barry is just about to co-host a new show. Called Catastrophe, it features the art of Bobby Dowler, who at the grand old age of 20 something is in fact a veteran of the new wave SE15 art scene, having been one of the founders of the Lyndhurst squat. Read more from londonist ...